I’ve been enjoying the service provided by Spotify for ages now, and have been a full subscriber for a year, and frankly it’s the best £10 a month I spend.

Recently, my best mate Dan has returned to Spotify after we7 started charging for content. I’m attempting to make his (& my) Spotify experience greater by sharing some playlists with him, and I thought I might share some of them with you, so we can all have a greater experience.

I love discovering new music. But new music does not necessarily mean released yesterday. Much music has been released over the years that I’ve never heard, or even heard of. As coldbrain recently, and eloquently pointed out Spotify is great for dipping in and trying out all music, new and old, and deciding what you should go and spend your hard-earned cash on.

But what old stuff do you go and try to if you’ve never heard of it? Well, people who listen to music for a living (lucky bastards) are always making lists of great music. One of the most famous, and perhaps the most contentious list is Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. These types of lists are always controversial based as they are on that most subjective of things; personal taste, but this one is a pretty comprehensive place to go and find some unheard of “classics”.

I love the album format, since it is generally the way an artist intended their music to be listened to. So I do find the presence of so many Greatest Hits albums on the list a little annoying. However, given that some game-changing artists, such as Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry released much of their finest material in the days before the long-player, perhaps there is some justification. The list might be considered a little out of date now, having been published in 2003, but given the object of this exercise is listening to old music that matters not.

I’ve put together a series of Spotify playlists, breaking the list up into groups of 10 for easy use and easy for off-line listening (the key to using the Spotify mobile app IMO). Some albums are greyed out, because they’re unavailable, but were in my files, others I’ve not added at all because I don’t have them AND they’re not on Spotify. In some cases (Greatest Hits in particular) I’ve substituted a slightly different European version of the American release found in the list. If you spot any that become available, or that I’ve missed, do let me know.

I started listening to them, starting at #1 around 6 months ago. Not that frequently though, so I’m sure you’ll soon catch up if you want to do that. But if you want to listen along with me, then this morning I listened to #57, Beggar’s Banquet by The Rolling Stones. I’ve also started using the hashtag #RS500 on twitter when discussing the albums, if you want to join in. Remember it’s not a crime to have not heard (of) them, unless you’re Dan and you’ve never heard London Calling (only kidding) – I still can’t believe I’d been 30 years on this earth without hearing Patti Smith’s Horses, but there you go. It’s also cool to not to like something, I for one can not see what all the fuss is with The Doors, each to their own, as they say.

I’ll put the next 100 albums together soon, but enough blathering, here’s the music: